UN Frontline Staff Consider Their Options as Pay Cuts Loom | Inter Press Service

UN Frontline Staff Consider Their Options as Pay Cuts Loom | Inter Press Service: " When the world’s most powerful ambassadors gathered in New York last week to celebrate the United Nations’ 70th anniversary, it would have been undiplomatic to mention the looming crisis facing the UN’s proudest achievement – its humanitarian aid programmes.

But the diplomats and political leaders at the anniversary concert in the General Assembly Hall with Lang Lang and the Harlem Boys Gospel Choir were well aware that they have just a few months to avert a fundamental threat to the UN’s ability to deliver its aid programmes effectively.

UN professional staff who deliver emergency relief in some of the most dangerous places in the world are now considering their options after learning that the value of their pay and allowances, including the right to family leave, will be cut by up to 10% next year, after a three year pay-freeze. The cuts will be heaviest at the lower grades, thereby falling disproportionately on staff recruited from the same developing countries that the UN is trying to help.

When the cuts were announced to World Food Programme workers in South Sudan, a staff association representative who was there said: “Everyone looked like they’d been punched in the stomach.”"



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